Should I buy a Macbook?

[MillField]

I have been a PC user for a long time now but I'm sick of buying laptops that are good for anything up to a year and then their performance just isn't there anymore. I've never spent more than €450 on a laptop.

I'm seriously considering buying a Macbook Pro in the next few months. Although I have it on good authority that they are great machines I wanted a few opinions from people here who took the plunge and went Mac. The obvious drawback is the price. The cheapest MBP is over €1200 here in Ireland (€1100 with a student discount).

The thing is I could really do with a powerful and reliable laptop. I am going into final year in my Computer Science degree. My one year old HP laptop is really struggling to run some of my most important software smoothly (Visual Studio, Eclipse etc) and it's getting awfully frustrating. I would also like to get started on iOS dev which I know requires a Mac.

So is it crazy to spend that money on a Mac or are they worth it? Can you recommend any place to get cheaper, maybe refurbished Macs?

Thanks for any help!

 

[Thorax_the_Impaler]

MacBooks don't really hold anything over standard notebooks other than beauty. They're not exceptionally powerful and they don't exactly offer anything exquisite except their OS. Don't get me wrong they are great computers; I just don't think they're worth the price.

Also, used Apple products, no matter where you look, will still run you quite a pretty penny.

 

[CommanderLiamTHX]

Nah, I wouldn't. Those things are super expensive. If you want the OSX thing so bad, you could find a good PC and make it a Hackintosh. I saw a video of a Samsung N310 from 2009 running Mac OS X Snow Leopard. So if a 300 dollar netbook could run Mac OS X, don't think those 2600 dollar Macbook Pros are all that powerful.

 

[Peter.Cort]

I used a macbook pro for a while and I loved it, compared to similarly spec'd windows laptops my mbp got way better battery life, and a lot of the components were better, and not the processor or ram or anything, they're all the same, power wise there really isn't too much difference, and unless you're compiling HUGE programs you won't see much of a difference. One of the big things is OSX takes up less resources which will give a bit of an advantage, and tends to run a little less bloated after a while just by nature, so that may be something to think about, but reinstalling windows every so often is always a good idea, and you'll probably find your laptop isn't all that slow, it was just getting bogged down by a couple years of ****.

The one thing I would caution you on is if you're coding in Java at all Apple releases their own Java updates, and that affects how you write code as the JDK is different, it isn't anything major most of the time, but if you're going to be coding cross platform at all, like still having a windows pc to code on in class or something, you might run into issues. I don't think it's an issue with C++, but I don't know as I don't do C++, but I know Java has issues.

 

[MillField]

Thanks for the replys guys. I'm going to stay with my laptop for another while and weigh up my options in a few months

 

[Yevrag35]

I always looked at it from this angle:

Would you like to not have to worry about whether you're laptop will turn on or not and sacrifice the freedom to experiment and customize (to a certain degree)? Or do you want total (to a certain extent) control of your laptop with the risk of messing it up?

 

[Jacobtheplayer]

I'm a pc user and I've had very little experience with macs but the choice is yours if you wan't a macbook buy one.

 

[mac_mogul]

Don't buy just yet! Mac Buyer's Guide: Know When to Buy Your Mac, iPod or iPhone

Definitely wait until the newest model is available and buy that one or get a discount on the previous model. It's up to you but I don't think anyone who's ever purchased a MacBook Pro has regretted their decision, PC and Mac users alike. They are fantastic computers.

 

[MillField]

Don't buy just yet! Mac Buyer's Guide: Know When to Buy Your Mac, iPod or iPhone

Definitely wait until the newest model is available and buy that one or get a discount on the previous model. It's up to you but I don't think anyone who's ever purchased a MacBook Pro has regretted their decision, PC and Mac users alike. They are fantastic computers.

I've heard that the next model of the Pro is to be released around October(ish)? If I decide to get one I will definitely get that one. No point being impatient when I can get a better machine!

I also really like the look of Mavericks, particularly iCloud Keychain.

 

[y2adre]

I sold my mid-2009 macbook, i despised apple before for the outrageous prices they charge and I have done so after I got rid of this free macbook.

I hate the viruses that comes with PC's but I love the freedom of customization